Amazonia, March 11, 2019
March 11, 2019
Chug chug chug goes the Bezos bulldozer.
Pop Ups Go Flat
Amazon said that it will shutter 87 of its pop up stores. Source: CNBC
All Hail, Annapurna
Amazon’s AWS success is a result of an acquisition. Forbes makes the complex simple. “How an Acquisition Made by Amazon in 2016 Became the Company’s Secret Sauce.” The “sauce” is Infrastructure as a Service or IaaS. The idea is managing hardware via meta-software. The idea is to knit together diverse entities and customer chips so one can manage services more efficiently.
Going to War for JEDI
The JEDI deal has been chugging along for … too long. Amazon, according to Bloomberg, is becoming more aggressive in an old fashioned way. “Amazon Is Flooding DC with Money and Muscle: the Influence Game” reports that
Federal records show that Amazon.com Inc. lobbied more government entities than any other tech company in 2018 and sought to exert its influence over more issues than any of its tech peers except Alphabet Inc.’s Google. Last year, Amazon spent $14.2 million on lobbying, a record for the company, up from its previous high mark of $12.8 million in 2017. The $77 million that the nine tech companies in the charts below spent in 2018 to lobby Washington looks minuscule next to the $280 million spent by pharmaceutical and health-care products companies. Tech has, however, pulled ahead of the $64 million that commercial banks spent—and Amazon in particular has a cachet that allows it to punch above its weight at times. Of the nine, only the $21 million Google spent on lobbying beat Amazon’s total. Since 2012, Amazon has ramped up spending by more than 460 percent—much faster than its rivals.
Surfacing Amazon Partners Is a Little Easier
Amazon appears to be baby steps to make its partner network more visible. For some reasons, Amazon partners were not too eager to talk about their activities with the online bookstore. “Amazon Debuts AWS Digital CS Competency” includes a partial list of partners; for example, this list, edited for clarity:
Content Management: Acquia, Brightspot, Censhare, Cloudinary, Contentful, Crownpeak, Pagely, Solodev, WP Engine
Marketing Automation: Braze, HubSpot, Localytics, MoEngage, SendGrid, Sigstr, Vidyard
Digital Commerce: Magento, Skava
Customer 360: Adverity, Amplitude, Chartio, Content Square, InsideView, Looker, Manthan, Segment, Tealium, Tickr, Upshot.AI
Consulting Partners: Bulletproof, CloudHesive, G-AsiaPacific, Infosys, Megazone, Metal Toad, Mobiquity, Silver Lining, Vector IT Group.
Complete? No.
AWS Fees: Lyft Version
We noted this fact in CNBC’s headline: “Lyft Plans to Spend $300 Million on Amazon Web Services through 2021.” What’s this buy? The report included this quote from an Amazon professional:
Lyft “is leveraging the breadth and depth of AWS’s services, including database, serverless, machine learning, and analytics, to automate and enhance on-demand, multimodal transportation for riders and drive innovation in its autonomous vehicles business.”
DarkCyber understands that Uber also uses AWS.
AWS Fees: Controlling Costs
AWS makes cloud services easy. That is the viewpoint of some. However, there are nooks and crannies in which services hide or cower. Some of these are overlooked but continue to generate billing. “How to Reduce the Cost of Your Amazon EC2 Service” explains that one has to manage Amazon. The write up explains that significant charges can be accrued from EBS volumes, Elastic IP Addresses, and Snapshots. Who’s on top of these stealthy costs? A Microsoft MVP.
Comparing Cloud Services
Consultants charge big bucks for comparisons with some facts about cloud services. “Comparing Serverless Architecture Providers: AWS, Azure, Google, IBM, and Other FaaS Vendors” offers some information on an ad supported Web site featuring an ad for Microsoft Azure. The comparison is more of a two or three sentence statement of what each vendor asserts. There is a pricing comparison of FaaS offerings, but these may not fit most use cases.
Helpful? Somewhat. Readable? Nope.
N2WS does offer some cost optimization tools. More information appears in “N2WS Expands Cost Optimization for Amazon Web Services with Amazon EC2 Resource Scheduling.”
Penetration Testing Amazon Gets Easier
Is Amazon confident, or is Amazon quietly hoping its security gaps will be discovered and reported more quickly? We learned in “Amazon Web Services Will No Longer Require Security Pros Running Penetration Tests on Their Cloud-Based Apps to Get Permission First.” As cloud services like Amazon and Azure gather more customers, their systems are likely to become increasingly attractive targets.
Amazon Emits Pollution
Not a surprise. CNBC reported “Jeff Bezos Is Finally Ending Secrecy over Amazon’s Role in Carbon Emissions.” DarkCyber noted this statement from the article:
Amazon recently announced its Shipment Zero goal under which the company aims to have 50 percent of all deliveries reach net zero carbon emissions by 2030.
Amazon has been less forthcoming than some other big shippers, according to the write up.
Ignored News? Bezos Considered Buying AMI
DarkCyber is not sure if this is accurate, but capturing the headline and the link seems appropriate. The story “Jeff Bezos Considered Buying the National Enquirer’s Parent Company After Photo Leak” appeared in Town and Country Magazine. Interesting.
Stephen E Arnold, March 11, 2019
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